A 16-year-old boy who stowed away in the wheel well of a flight from San Jose, Calif., to Maui, is loaded into an ambulance at Kahului Airport on April 20. / Chris Sugidono, AP

by John Bacon, USA TODAY

by John Bacon, USA TODAY

The California teen who survived a five-hour flight in the wheel well of a Boeing 767 was trying to return to his family in Africa but got confused and stowed away in a Hawaii-bound flight, local media reported Wednesday.

The 15-year-old boy fled his family's one-story home in Santa Clara early Sunday after an argument with his father, a cab driver, Hawaii News Now reported. His mother lives in Somalia, the website said.

The teen has lived in the United States for about four years. For the last month he has attended Santa Clara High, where he took English as a second language, school officials said. Principal Gregory Shelby told the San Francisco Chronicle that the school district "would be ready to have him back" and would provide counseling if needed.

The youth, who authorities previously said was 16 years old, was resting comfortably at a Hawaii hospital, Hawaii Department of Human Services spokeswoman Kayla Rosenfeld said. Child Welfare Services was arranging his return home.

The teen hopped the fence at Mineta San Jose International Airport at 1 a.m. Sunday and hid on the plane for about seven hours before Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 left for Maui, FBI spokesman Tom Simon said. San Jose airport surveillance video shows a figure cross the tarmac and head toward the 767.

The teen said he climbed into the closest plane to the fence he scaled, and that he was confused by the writing on the plane, Hawaii News Now reported.

When the landing gear retracted, he would have had to curl up in the fetal position or crouch down for the entire flight. There is no way to get into the main cabin or luggage compartment without removing large pieces of the 767's interior, Jon Day, general manager of Southern California Aviation in Victorville, told the Associated Press.

The boy was found on the Maui airport grounds about an hour after the plane landed, Simon said. He was disoriented, had trouble hearing and was taken to a hospital, Hawaii News Now reported.

"No system is foolproof," San Jose airport aviation director Kim Aguirre told AP. "Certainly as we learn more, if we see any gaping holes, we will work to fill them."

Aguirre said a perimeter search found no holes in the barbed wire fence surrounding their 1,050 acre facility, and officials were waiting to finish their investigation before implementing any additional security measures.

The Federal Aviation Administration says the teen's apparently miraculous survival was not a first. Its data cite two cases of high-altitude flight by stowaways, one from Cuba to Spain and another from Colombia to Miami. The flights reached about 35,000 feet with outdoor temps as low as -65 degrees.

"The presence of warm hydraulic lines in the wheel-well and the initially warm tires provided significant heat," the FAA report says of those incidents. Then, the slow climb to the thin air of higher altitudes leads to gradual, but not fatal, unconsciousness and low body temperatures. Those gradually resolve as the plane descends.

Upon landing, "individuals were found in a semi-conscious state, and, upon treatment, recovered," the report said.

The FAA report, however, notes that numerous "copycat" attempts have ended in death. There were 95 attempted stowaways on 84 flights worldwide between 1996 and August 2012, the FAA says. More than 75% resulted in deaths.